


Lighthouse

by LycanCoffee



Series: Safe and warm [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood, Canon Compliant, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Vomiting, coping?? not in my house, shiro where in tarnation, uhhh ill think of more later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 17:38:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15935165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LycanCoffee/pseuds/LycanCoffee
Summary: It all comes bit by bit, and one dreamless night won't stop the world from crashing down.





	Lighthouse

**Author's Note:**

> Hey go read the first one first!! its better that way, probably  
> heith goin into maximum overdrive babey.... we stan

Keith woke up tired, but slightly less tired than before. It was fuzzy, everywhere. A soft sort of fuzzy, like white kitten fur and cotton balls, and it was warm. He felt, distantly, his face squished against coarse fabric, feeling damp and warm.

He remembered….

That he needed to go back to his room, but he just wanted to tuck himself further into the blanket wrapped around him.

Ah, wait, he hadn’t had a blanket before, right?

“Hnnmk?” he said, sitting up, eyes squished tight. His face felt sticky.

He blinked his eyes open and surveyed the surrounding area. 

Ah. It was still dark in the room. Hunk was on the ground, asleep, and the only sound audible was his gentle breathing. Red, warm imprints were left where skin had met skin as Keith had curled progressively tighter inward in his sleep.

As he regained his mind, guilt welled up inside of him, at once telling him to get up, fold the blanket, start training, and to stay warm and sleepy forever. The frustration of his situation burnt him up inside. It sent tongues of flame and scorching hot spikes radiating up his spine. His skin felt itchy. He felt like a little kid again, tearing up his homework in a fit of irritation at his teachers, his classmates, and the whole goddamn world. 

“Keith? Go back to sleep.”

Keith jolted when he felt a single hand patting his arm softly through the blanket. It was Hunk, one arm lazily stretched from his position on the ground. 

Pat, pat, pat.

“Shshshshhhhhh shh shhhh, it’s night time,” Hunk said in an overly soft voice, his own eyes shut, and his mouth barely moving.

Keith’s eyebrows scrunched up. “I didn’t say even say anything,” he grumbled.

“It’s beddy bye time, dude. It’s the time… for bed,” Hunk was almost falling asleep as he commanded him. “Go to beddddddddddd,” he said, drawing out the word as he flopped back down to the floor.

“This is a couc-”

“Shhh, I can’t hear over how much you should be sleeping right now.”

Reluctantly, Keith laid back down. The cold misery was creeping up his spine again, but his eyelids were drooping, and he let himself fall back into warmth.

-

It didn’t last forever.

Of course not.

An hour after a mission that almost ended in bloodshed, he was standing in front of the sink in his bathroom, choking and gagging on nothing. He felt himself shake to the point of almost breaking, almost falling onto the ground. He could feel, could feel the razor thin sheet of ice that stood between him and falling apart completely. It made his stomach turn. It was like looking down at the world from a cliff and feeling your blood rush as your body imagines it is falling. It was delicate. Precarious. He could almost feel himself crying, screaming, and throwing up chunks onto the floor, sharp cheek pressed against the cold tile, limbs splayed numbly about like they weren’t attached to his body. 

It was so dangerous, the feeling of falling, that he pressed his hand against the sheet of ice as firmly as he could just to see if it would break.

 

 

He couldn’t even manage a tear.

Without him noticing, his body had gone completely still, with one hand pressed awkwardly against his face. He dragged it down and watched the skin warp. His other hand clenched itself so tightly into a fist that his nails stung against the meat of his palm. The hand that had been on his face imitated it, knuckles white. He watched his reflection’s expression tighten and felt his own jaw uncomfortably tense.

He hissed until it turned into a grunt and ruffled his hair with both hands. 

The shower he took felt like daggers in his skin. It was always too warm or too cold, so he settled on too warm. He didn’t bother with soap, he just needed the grime and shame that had built up to weather down. He left his clothes in a pile next to the shower and tugged a pair of boxers on. He crashed, barely moving the covers of the bed, but a damp spot was forming from the wet towel around his shoulders. 

 

-

He didn’t sleep. The pain was awful, like a choking fog that hung in the room, and nothing was safe. The restless, bone-tired cold was manifesting under his skin and in his throat. There was no light, just all encompassing dark. An acidic gas that burned him. It was awful, awful, awful vomit on the floor blood building up under nails eyes too dry choke choke die die die-

“Knock.”

Keith noticed that, again, he had been still this whole time. He had almost stopped breathing. Just like a corpse. His knees were tucked under his chin, and little crescent moons were marked onto the places his hands had been.

“Knock knock.”

It shouldn’t be so hard to force his muscles into movement, but as he pried himself from the bed he felt his teeth chatter. 

He slid open the door, and saw a bowl of food on the ground.

He’d skipped dinner in favor of stalking off to his room and making Allura deal with, whatever… team building nonsense. With atrophied hands he lifted the bowl and glared at it. It was mostly food goo, but there was thin slices of some sort of fruit they’d been gifted by an allianced planet on top of the dish. On closer inspection, there was a spoon stuck in the side. He dragged one hand down his face and sighed. 

It tasted like potatoes.

-  
Hunk had been especially helpful lately, but if you asked Keith, it wasn’t until he had spent an afternoon with Hunk as he tinkered with new projects in a comfortable but conversationless space, that had started stiff but by the end had melted entirely the weight on his shoulders as he watched him pull things apart and put them back together again in careful, thoughtful movements with his tongue sticking out just a little at the corner of his mouth that Keith realized holy shit, this is nice.

It’s not his fault he can’t… people, properly, but it still took a while to realize that this was something he could depend upon. 

It was difficult and he avoided it at all costs, but he was starting to comprehend there was a possibility that he could lean emotionally on Hunk a little. 

So obviously he didn’t, but he started to see him a little more like a lighthouse in a hurricane, a single beacon that led him somewhere home...-ish.

Hunk was a breath of air. 

He was… warm, and more solid than anything else he had seen in the whole universe.

The way he would ease the tension in his shoulders was alarming, so he was careful not to spend too much time with him at the risk of the magic wearing off, the other shoe dropping, but he spent a few moments when he felt worst searching out warmth over the course of a day. A moment here and there, to look up at him and breathe. He was starting to believe in something else than pain.

As a consequence, he began to spend a little more time with his other teammates. His worst days were confined to the kitchen at the artificial night, alone except for Hunk, or his room (though he was starting to seek the former more). Outside of those, when he was simply in the same room as Hunk, there was almost always Pidge or Lance chattering away like a battering ram somewhere near, and then Allura, because where else would she go? The mice would crowd around her and Coran would be telling stories to Lance and Pidge would be riffing on his over enthusiastic gestures just out of their line of sight and Hunk, would be trying not to laugh while he worked and Keith would almost laugh too.

But there was still an iron blanket on his back every. cursed. moment, to be dealt with while he fought and strategized and tried to sleep. There was still fitful showers and skipping meals, after all of it. 

It couldn’t last.


End file.
